Shownotes
Resilience gets printed on posters until life tests us. Real resilience isn't loud, it's quietly showing up for your life on days no one is watching. This episode is for anyone in a hard chapter. Host Nazish sits with Reino Gevers.
A former journalist who walked the Camino through burnout, Reino shares why resilience is built slowly, why vulnerability connects us, and how listening to your body and nature's seasons carries you through.
About the Guest:
Reino Gevers is an author, mentor, and speaker who has walked the Camino de Santiago more than a dozen times. A former journalist, he writes on resilience and nature's wisdom, including his book The Turning of the Circle.
Key Takeaways:
- Resilience isn't toughness or a wall. It's listening to your body, which always knows the score.
- Vulnerability connects; armor isolates. Showing up honestly invites the empathy we need as social beings.
- Much suffering is attachment. Accepting a hard chapter lets you move through it faster than resisting.
- Step away from the 24/7 negativity feed. Stillness and nature rebuild the resilience screens erode.
Connect With the Guest:
Connect with Reino Gevers:
- Website: reinogevers.com
- Blog & podcast: reinodiary.com
- Also on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn
Episode Chapters:
[00:00] Resilience Beyond the Slogan — what this episode is really about
[02:30] Meet Reino Gevers — resilience lived, not theorized (approx.)
[04:00] The Camino After Burnout — walking through a dysfunctional chapter (approx.)
[10:00] Where We Get Resilience Wrong — toughness, armor, and self-erasure (approx.)
[16:00] Vulnerability as Connection — why we need empathy and each other (approx.)
[22:00] Under Real Pressure — attachment, acceptance, and self-love (approx.)
[27:00] This Too Shall Pass — the seasons of life and a closing word (approx.)
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Transcripts
00:00:06 Nazish: Resilience is one of those words we throw around carelessly until life actually test us. We use it on motivational posters. We sprinkle it through corporate decks and. And then the heart chapter arrives. We discover that the resilience we thought we had was the inner thinner than we hoped. Real resilience is not loud.
00:00:32 Nazish: welcome to mind over matter I am. And this is the show where we look at the inner architecture of resilience, not as a slogan, but as something quietly built and quietly maintained inside real human beings. Tonight is a conversation about staying steady in a world that keeps shaking and the quiet, often unglamorous practices that make us possible over the long arc. My guest today is Reno, Griever. Reno has spent time inside the topic of resilience, both personally and professionally, and his way of speaking about it grounded and free of slogan. Reno. Welcome to Mind Over matter. So glad to have you here.
00:01:19 Reino Gevers : Happy to be on your show. Nazish.
00:01:22 Nazish: Perfect before. So before we go ahead, listeners,
00:02:03 Nazish: So right now I want to start with your own journey. So walk us back into a chapter of your life where resilience stop becoming a concept you understood and became something you actually had to live with.
00:02:20 Reino Gevers : Well, let's go back to the year two thousand and six when I did my first pilgrimage walk. I was at a stage in life where I was in a dysfunctional marriage, and my journey as a journalist in the media industry had come to an end because of the digital revolution which changed the whole newspaper environment, the whole media environment. So it was at a point of, um, on the edge of a burnout. And then a friend of mine suggested, uh, to go for a walk to take a time out to find stillness on the Camino in northwestern Spain, which I did then, uh, for ten days, which wasn't enough. I did continue that journey the following year, but what I found out on that walking pilgrimage is that we can do far more than we believe we can do. Uh, over the years, I've walked more than a dozen pilgrimage routes and different parts of Europe, and I've spoken to hundreds of people and also did a lot of training in company corporate environments. On the topic of emotional and physical exhaustion. And what I find is that stress always starts in the mind. Uh, it starts with a thought. And if we don't create a space for recuperation, uh, that, uh, thought will become overwhelming. Overwhelming. We'll find ourselves in the monkey mind. Uh, we we wake up at night with constantly the same thoughts. Uh, so building resilience is, is actually a long process. In my personal case, it took me a few years to build emotional and physical resilience.
00:04:25 Nazish: You know, if there is something that stresses us out, it does come on us. And just like you said, resilience is not same as being tough, resilience listen or just and keeps going with intelligence.
00:04:41 Reino Gevers : Absolutely. I think it's the art of listening to your body. Your body will tell you when something is wrong. We all know that that gut feeling when we enter a room and we don't feel well, we don't feel comfortable with the people in that room or with that person in that room. And one should listen to that intuitive feeling because the body always knows the score. It's the same with emotional and physical exhaustion. Your body will tell you when it's enough, when you need sleep, when you need recuperation, when you've been eating the wrong foods, your body will tell you through many symptoms that something has to change.
00:05:32 Nazish: Yes. And you know, having that awareness to understand those symptoms and to listen to them is a big thing.
00:05:41 Reino Gevers : Yes, absolutely. I mean, it's training. You know, the the culture out there is telling us that resilience is being tough. Is, is building a wall around you is building an armor shield of armor around you. Well, that's, um, something that will catch up with you at some point because, um, there is, uh, the mystics knew all about this. If you, if you go into the scriptures of, of the ancient sages, they all, uh, commend taking a time out for stillness, for spending time in nature, for schooling, your sense of awareness, that means your, your, your ability to, uh, to listen, to see, to perceive what is around you.
00:06:40 Nazish: And you know, something I keep coming back to is how often resilience gets confused with stoicism, with suppression, with grinding through pain. So I want to slow this down in yours and ask you, like in your work, where do you see people most often getting resilience wrong? And what is the actual difference between healthy resilience in a slow, quiet form of self erasure dressed up as strength?
00:07:10 Reino Gevers : Well, I think it's it's a very male thing. Um, I think this wrong perception of resilience probably comes from the military. But, uh, if, if we look at the, uh, martial arts, for instance, the martial arts teach us to go soft and to, to look for that loophole, to be aware and to be conscious and not to confront the the enemy with brute force because, uh, that that tactic will inevitably lead to injury or to death. Um, so martial arts is a good school, uh, to train resilience. Uh, I personally practice the, the, um, uh, tai chi form and also the tai chi sword form, which has helped me tremendously in, in schooling presence, uh, and, uh, schooling, schooling, what my body needs and, and, uh, where, where I, where I go into, uh, into resistance or where I go into, into tension. You feel it in your shoulders, you feel it in your wrists, you feel it in your lower belly. Uh, and if you go soft, especially through methods like breathing, I think, uh, breathing, Inhaling and exhaling through the nose is a fantastic way of, uh, cooling, softness of schooling, um, a different kind of resilience. Uh, now, you mentioned stoicism. I think that too is also a concept that is often misunderstood. Um, I think it's facing a challenge and riding the storm is, is something different than, than, than going, going into, into a hard resistance as such.
00:09:12 Nazish: That is, that is very true. And this distinction is so important because the cultural version of resilience has been weaponized in some quiet ways. And people often blame, and then, you know, people have been asked to bear unreasonable conditions in the name of being strong.
00:09:33 Reino Gevers : Yes, I think you have this also ingrained in some family patterns. Uh, especially if, um, we look at, uh, the, the, the male role, uh, typically, uh, we, we men have been taught, uh, not to show vulnerability. Um, and, and to, to remain steadfast. Now that I think is not, uh, what we, we would define as, as healthy resilience. I think healthy resilience is showing vulnerability when there is a need to, uh, to show vulnerability. Because when you show vulnerability, actually, you connect. You connect with fellow human beings, um, who will show you empathy. Uh, if we go into a tough resilience, we create a wall, we don't create a connection. And we human beings are social beings. We need social connection. We need, uh, that, that, um, that empathy from our fellow human beings, especially from, from our loved ones.
00:10:50 Nazish: Empathy is a very important factor. It is so underrated, but I believe we all need it in so many stages of our times. And then we will, like I have seen men acting especially tough. No, I don't have to cry. I don't have to feel this. But at the end of the day, I believe it is good to have that. It is good to have a shoulder to cry on. It is good to have someone in front of who you can let all your emotions out.
00:11:17 Reino Gevers : Absolutely. And, um, I think if we don't, um, reveal those emotions, if we don't reveal that vulnerability. It. It stays in the body. The body will find some avenue to express. Um, it's hurt, it's pain. Um, and often that expression finds an avenue in, in a serious illness, uh, in emotional exhaustion and fatigue. Because why are we having depression and, uh, emotional exhaustion almost in epidemic proportions. It's because, uh, we, we don't find space for stillness. We don't find space for connection. Uh, having hundreds and thousands of friends on social media is not connection. Connection and empathy you find with human beings that enrich you, that, uh, build you up, that give you energy, that, uh, give you validation that give you love. Uh, and we're having less and less of that if we're looking at, uh, the major cities, especially in Western Europe and North America. Most households are single households, people living alone. And we're having a loneliness epidemic in big cities. We're losing connection to, uh, friends and family that was essentially a part of being human in, uh, village and town life.
00:12:58 Nazish: Yes. That is that is very true. I want to ask you because resilience under hypothetical condition is one big thing, and resilience under real pressure is another entirely. So what happens when a person feels like life gets genuinely hard, and when the real loss. When the loss is so real And when uncertainty stretches on longer than expected.
00:13:25 Reino Gevers : Yeah. I think every human being goes through pain and suffering in a different way. But I think, um, people with a high level of resilience, uh, and I'm talking about people who have healthy social connections, who have found methods of dealing with stressful situations, go through that dark space far quicker than those people who've never had hardship in their life and who've never suffered pain, who've never gone through loss. That really hits them. Uh, and they often lose, uh, grounding completely, uh, because resilience is actually a process that, that, uh, can take many years, and people with a high level of resilience are often those people who've gone through much pain and loss during their life, and they've learned that this is very much part of life that, um, uh, the attachment either to, to happiness or to, or to loss and sadness is, is actually the pain. Uh, that is actually the real pain is, is the attachment. It's what we know from Buddhist teachings. Uh, the, the ability to, to release attachment is one of the clues to happiness.
00:14:59 Nazish: That is, that is absolutely true. But, you know, it is easier said than done. We try so hard to give up attachments. We try so hard to not feel close. But then somehow there is someone doing something that just, you know, makes us feel at home.
00:15:17 Reino Gevers : Yes, yes, I think, I think, um, a big part of, of resilience is also self-love. Um, I think that trap, um, enters when you start losing self-love, you start condemning yourself and telling yourself, well, this can't be. Uh, I have to be different. This pain can't be, uh, this, this sadness can't be. Uh, but if you learn to accept that you go through painful chapters in life, that this is very much part of life's journey to go through pain and loss. Uh, you will find that you can release those episodes of pain and loss far quicker than if you remain in that dark hole. Um, and hope. Hope to find compassion that way. But compassion. I think. Compassion from loved ones starts with the the acceptance of of that pain. Admitting I'm going through a bad patch at the moment, admitting that I'm going through sadness at the moment. It's just the way it is at times in life.
00:16:38 Nazish: this sentence is the is the kind of thing that does not sound impressive in a podcast, but it does enormous work inside a person who is listening to it right now.
00:16:52 Reino Gevers : Yes, absolutely. And if if there are listeners out there going through a bad chapter in life, I would tell them, this too shall pass. This too shall pass. No. Life is always darkness. Uh, you. You go through light and shadow. It's it's life is cyclical. We go through seasons of life. Uh, and those dark seasons of life, those winter seasons of life are times where we can withdraw and reflect on who we really are. Uh, so that we create the conditions for, for a new chapter, for a new beginning. The spring of life. Uh, and, uh, we have that cyclical movement. If we observe nature closely or even a day, we start the morning feeling fresh and fit. And over the course of the day, we have various challenges that we have to deal with. In the evening. We, we obviously then need time for recuperation and sleep, and the next morning we are there for a new beginning again. And I see this very much as an analogy of life itself. Life is a journey where where we go through times of pain, through times of suffering. But just as much we we should not lose the perspective for joy, for beauty, for, for love, which is there at the same time. But the problem we are having, uh, globally at the moment is that we are having digital media, media feeding us with negativity twenty four over seven all the time. And, uh, this creates a collective consciousness of, of negativity. So I think it is really crucial and vital for, for each one of us to, to extract ourselves every now and then from from digital media.
00:19:02 Nazish: I, I agree with that big time. And this is such a beautiful thing that anyone has said till now. And, you know, now tell me this thing that if you and you know, the beauty about all of this, is that the way you said that this too shall pass, this is something that we all need to listen. It is there. But when we hear it from somebody else, it feels so real.
00:19:29 Reino Gevers : Yes. And and, um, this actually this sentence actually comes from Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, uh, where, uh, the country was going through a really bad chapter. And he told his soldiers in the Civil War, um, this too shall pass. And it did pass. And we are having at the moment, uh, various conflicts in the world, in the Middle East, in, uh, in the Ukraine. And, uh, several nations, uh, are going through really bad chapters. Uh, but history shows us that these are episodes that everything at some point passes. Nothing lasts forever.
00:20:23 Nazish: Yes. That is, that is very true. So after this conversation, I believe there will be a lot of listeners who would want to connect with you, learn more about your work, especially those who are ready, who are ready to deepen the architecture of their own resilience. So where can they find you and connect with you?
00:20:42 Reino Gevers : They can find me on my website, uh, Rainer Gervas dot com. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, LinkedIn. Uh, you will find me there. In. You will find my. My books with all good books are sold. I can really recommend the latest edition of this book here, which is called The Turning of the circle, where I have written a lot about the the seasons of life, um, the, the spring, the summer, uh, the, the, the, the late summer, um, autumn and winter stages of life and how that very much reflects, uh, both within and with and externally. And if we understand nature's laws, the laws of nature, then we get a better understanding of ourselves.
00:21:44 Nazish: That is, that is such a beautiful thing you have said. And I will make sure to include your website link into the show notes so that a lot of people can reach out to you. So thank you. You know, this was the kind of conversation mind over matter is built for quite grounded and free of slogans. To all the listeners who is in the middle of their heart chapter right now. I will leave you with this. The resilience you are looking for is not waiting for you on the other side of this moment. It is being built inside you right now in the very fact that you have not given up. You do not have to feel strong to be strong. You just have to keep showing up. One more honest act at a time and take care of yourself. We will meet again in the next episode. Thank you so much.
